Triple Click - Are Video Games Really A Waste Of Time?

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

It's the 200th episode of Triple Click, and to celebrate, it's time for a mailbag! The gang answers listener questions such as "could we ever see gambling in video games?" and "are games really a waste of time?"One More Thing:Kirk: “Behind F1’s Velvet Curtain” by Kate Wagner Maddy: Sailor MoonJason: The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice HallettLINKS:“Behind F1’s Velvet Curtain” by Kate Wagner, preserved in archive form: https://web.archive.org/web/20240301170542/https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a46975496/behind-f1-velvet-curtain/ and at Escape Collective: https://escapecollective.com/behind-f1s-velvet-curtain/Triple Click LIVE in LA! Saturday, June 8, 6:30PM at the Teagram Ballroom: https://teragramballroom.com/tm-event/triple-click-podcast/Preorder Jason’s Book! https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jason-schreier/play-nice/9781538725429/Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

The man goes to the doctor. He says he's depressed. The doctor says, here's your treatment. Listen to Triple Click. The man says, but doctor, that's actually a really good idea. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. This week, we're opening up the mailbag and answering your questions. Is it ethical to teach video game development? How do you remember game stories? And what musical would make the best game. I'm Jason Schreier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. Welcome back. Hello. Welcome back, everyone. episode of Triple Click, our old video game podcast. It is kind of old at this point. It is a little old. And hey, if you want to keep us growing older and older, you can support us because we are entirely supported by listeners just like you. And we are very grateful to all of you who make this show possible by going to maximum fun.org slash join and becoming a member, helping us make this show.

And also getting bonus episodes every single month. We have a whole lot of cool ones in the pipe. We just released one on Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, where we did a deep dive into that game. And we've got more cool stuff coming in the near future. I think we're going to do kind of a weird experimental one this month. We'll see. We'll see how that goes. And yeah, just become a member.

What are you waiting for? Just go sign up. Give us your money. What are you doing? Maximumfund.org. Join. Join today. All right, this week we are opening up the listener mailbag.

We got a whole lot of questions. And we want to read them. We want to answer some listener questions. So just reminder before we get started, you can always reach us to triple click at maximum fun. org. Email us your questions. And as always, as I always remind everybody, short is good, brevity is good. And think a little outside the box.

We like questions that are not kind of the typical questions that we'll get. sometimes I'll answer a question even if we've kind of addressed it before, but usually we like ones that are a little bit more unusual. All right, Maddie, what's the first question? Well, it's from someone named Jason to a strange coincidence. And here's how it reads, hey, triple click, long-time co-host, first-time caller. Congrats on 200 episodes. What's it like to be so awesome. Hey, you know, that's true.

We have made 200 episodes. Wow. The show is old. What a milestone. What a thing. it's a lot of episodes. What is it like to be so awesome? That is a great question, Jason.

You sound very smart and handsome. And you know, it's a nice short question too. Yeah, and it's not one we've gotten before. No, it hasn't. It hasn't. What is it like to be so awesome? Wow, we made it to 200 episodes, guys. Pretty good.

That's exciting. That's pretty cool. That means we've been doing this show for almost exactly four years. Yeah. Four years since we all left Kitakou. Yeah, I was going to say. of Kachaku before. But Maddie and I left Kachaku and Kachaku's split screen.

We put that show to an end and we started Triple Click. And now we own our show and we do what we want. Pretty cool. Yeah, it is pretty cool. Pretty cool. It is really cool. Yeah, four years. It's wild.

Solid. We're about to graduate from podcast high school. Yeah, that's what happens at 200. Yeah, wow. Yeah, after four years, you know, your senior year. After four years, we get our diploma. We walk on stage. Seethorn gives us a piece of paper.

Yeah. Put another way, people who were starting high school and we launched this podcast are now. Oh, they're about to graduate. graduating, going off into the world. That's true. Going to college. Yeah, maybe they're about to graduate college. Maybe they're going to go major in game studies.

And we'll have a question related to that a little later. That's true. We will. Yeah. Well, I was going to say maybe they're going to major in podcast studies. Ah, yeah. Is that a major? Audio production is, and it's not a bad.

skill to learn. It is. That is a pretty good skill to learn. That's a good question. If you're, if you're taking a podcast studies course out there, let us know. Well, so I went to a school at NYU called the Gallatin School of Individualized Study and it was kind of like a create your own major program. And a running joke within Gallatin was that like some people had just like totally whack job like weirdo majors like one kid was like majoring in evil. Hell yeah. You got to keep your eye on that kid. Like James over there as majoring in evil We're a little worried about it

Someone Someone, I don't know if this is apocryphal Or if like it was a real thing Or just like kind of an urban legend Yeah The story was that someone was majoring in Teenage mutant Ninja turtles Sure

And they would do that by studying Renaissance history and animation Interesting That can't be true Would they study biology and turtles? Yeah, biology That I wouldn't be shocked If someone now at Gallatin

was like, I'm going to major in podcast, and they just listened to Joe Rogan and, like, write a thesis. Yeah, that is who they would think. That's right. And us. And so what you had to do to graduate Gallauden is you had to do like kind of a thesis slash seminar thing where you would argue your major to a panel of professors. And that's how you graduated is by passing this kind of thing. And it was interesting. It was kind of a silly thing to do. But my major in case you guys are curious was storytelling. Okay. Hey man, I mean, look at you now. And now I tell sorry. I just got an English major, which what does that work? Well, probably more useful. Yeah. But anyway, so 200 episodes, we did it. And big thanks to you all of the listeners out there for helping make this show possible. And what is it like to be so awesome to answer the question here? I think it's pretty cool. Yeah. It's fine. It's going great so far. Yeah, that's digging it. All right. Let's get some listener questions in here, shall? Mark, what's the next one? This next one comes from James, who I believe majored in evil along with you.

So, congrats to James. That's not true. That's also obogryphal. That's not true. James majored in good. James writes, Dear Triple Click, I really enjoy your podcast. I listen every week. A question for you.

The composer Ludwig Jaronson recently won Best Original Score at the Oscars. I'll interject here, he won for his unbelievable score for Oppenheimer, which runs for like the entire length of the movie and his bananas. and he's a very talented composer. Anyways, continuing James's question. James writes, in his acceptance speech, he said, to my parents, thank you for giving me guitars and drum machines instead of video games. This caused a stir online with many praising him for his comments,

but it left gamers feeling once again that their hobby had been singled out as problematic above all others. My question is, why are video games continually attacked for being a waste of time compared to all other forms of entertainment? Which are also a waste of time, as we all. Oh. Right. All entertain. Not worth you should be working, producing content. Yep. Work. I feel like, darn.

I feel like 15 years ago I would have been like, God, I can't believe he said this. And now I'm kind of like, well, I mean, video games can be a wasted. There are a lot of games that are waste of time. That's right. And how do we feel about all the balauchery we played? Fine. It's fine. Yeah, I'm fine with that. It's more, I don't know. I think there are a lot of games that are designed to be time racers. If you're playing Candy Crush on your phone, like you're probably not thinking like, oh, man, this is a great artistic achievement.

You're probably thinking, oh, this is a fun way to kill time or to multitask or whatever it is you're doing. That's true. But I mean, I think there are also TV shows that are a waste of time and not necessarily in a bad way. And I mean, movies to a lesser extent, there's only so much time that can be wasted, although I would argue that as they get longer and longer, plenty of movies feel like they're wasting my time. But all forms of entertainment could theoretically. be a waste of time. And that's an interesting question. So why isn't an instrument? I think there is something about video games that's worth singling out. Or I think there's a reason that people singling out. Like when Ludwig says that, I kind of understand what he's saying, especially as someone who is like,

I mean, I'm trying to learn new musical instruments. Like I want to take the time to practice and create music. And I look at the amount of time that I spend playing video games, which is substantial. Uh-huh. It is extremely clear to me that like the reason I haven't finished enough, album is at least in part because I played whatever 100 hours of this game and 80 hours of that game and 60 hours of that game, take all those hours and add them up and I could be doing something else. So I understand why someone would say this. And I will say that at least to me, yes, that is true of other forms of media, but video games can take much more of your time and can be designed to be so sticky to pull you in. I've watched the way that like kids, my nieces,

play video games when they're playing them. Like, it is a slightly different thing, or at least it can feel different. So I at least understand why he's saying that, and I get where that criticism is coming from. I still love video games, think they're really cool, love playing them, have made the choices that I've made in my life to spend that time doing that.

But especially with kids, like when you're talking about your parents, encouraging you to learn music composition, to learn how to play guitar and write music, I mean, Ludwig Joranssen is four years younger than me and just won a friggin' Academy Award for, like, one of the best film scores I've ever heard, you know? getting into it. Kirk, what are you doing? What are you doing? I don't know. I'm thinking a podcast about video games right now.

If you add up all your video game time, it probably amounts to about four years. So that's what you're kind of, that's your lag. So anyways, like, I, there's something to what are you saying. I agree. And I think that like if you're, when you're a parent, especially, you're kind of like, well, I mean, games, coming at this as obviously a big video game enthusiast at a parent, I think that like I'm never going to be like to my kids, you can never play video games. You must play music instead. But I do think that it's really, I do think it's really important to find a balance. And something that I now as an adult look back and appreciate that my parents did is that like if I was ever home, if I had a snow day or something or like a day off from school, they would have me put together a schedule where I would be like game time, one hour, going outside, one hour, doing this thing, one hour.

That's great. Yeah. Read a book. One hour. And I actually, like, looking back of that, I'm very glad that I did that because otherwise, I would literally, I would be playing Final Fantasy six for like 10 hours in a row. And I'm glad that I didn't do that. So I actually think that like I see why he said that and I don't really think there's harm in it. And I think games, to your point, Kirk, yes, they can have this hook on you that like watching bad TV or watching a movie can't really do. And if anything, I mean, I think this is kind of a compliment to the, the, the art form. I think it speaks to the power that games can have, that you have to, and I think you have to kind of like, I don't know, they're awesome in the sense of the word that is like, they inspire awe. They are something that you have to kind of treat with a certain degree of respect and a degree of

like you can't let yourself fall into a game or else you might go into dangerous territory. I think that's just part of the medium. And I think as any real game enthusiast has to kind of acknowledge that, Like, who among us hasn't lost weekends of our lives to the spell of like a really good video game? It's a very real phenomenon. Yeah, I guess I only feel differently because I wasn't allowed to watch television growing up, but I was allowed to play as many musical instruments as my heart desired, and I was also allowed to play video games. So I have this very weird, like, snap reaction to Ludwig here where I'm like, well, why not both?

Like, I don't understand. Like, what's wrong with being given guitars and drum machines and then all, also video games, but then I have to also look back on it and be like, my parents did limit the amount of screen time I have as it's called colloquially now. It was limited. I had to be like, okay, I'm going to go play a video game. My parents knew what I was doing, when I was doing it. I still had a bedtime and so on and so forth. It wasn't just unmediated free time. Whereas if I wanted to go play a musical instrument, I didn't have to ask permission and be like, oh, can I use the television or whatever it may be? I was allowed to do that to my heart's content. So that is kind of a

difference in kind of mediating your kids' time, where it's like, there are some activities that are just sort of food for the soul, if you will. And then there are things that are, maybe there's some food for the soul in there. But it's also going to eat a little of your soul while it is giving you the food. I don't know if this metaphor works, but you, y'all are picking up what I'm putting down. Like, they're additive and subtractive. You're gaining something, but you're also losing something. And I don't know. I mean, I could have, there's also times in my life when I've stayed up way too late working on a song, though. And that sensation can feel

just as intense. And this isn't a podcast where we talk about composing music. It could be. I'm just saying, man, we could pivot right now. 200th episode, we become a songwriting music. It's an interesting, it's an interesting thing where I'm like, I wonder if Ludwig also felt that sense of addictive draw

to like playing music, that that can also happen of like obsessively fine tuning things, practicing over and over, staying up late doing that. And if that's why he's like, I'm glad. that this was the thing that I was devoting my life to because I could have instead been addicted to video games because I have an obsessive personality. I don't know. I'm projecting this onto him just based on my own experiences with it of feeling that way sometimes. I think there's something to you that. I mean, a big reason that I love video games and music are because they both involve flow states.

They both induce the same kind of feeling. Like when you're really in the studio and writing music, it has that similar wonderful flow state. And I mean, I don't know. Like, yeah, this quote could be read a lot of different. But generally, saying to your parents, thank you for encouraging me to pursue something that required discipline that encouraged my creativity and allowed me to learn the skills I needed to do this thing that I now love doing rather than giving me a video game and saying, hey, go have fun, kid. Like, I think you could just read him saying that, and that alone, that totally makes sense as a thing to thank your parents for, especially when you're, like, now a very successful

and presumably artistically fulfilled composer. Like, you know, that's cool. I totally get why he would thank his parents for me. I think he should maybe try playing Baldersgate 3, though, because it's pretty good. My question for him is, how many times did he die when he was trying to be returnal? That's my question for Ludwig. That's a really good question, Kirk. What if his parents had given him guitar hero and, like, drum hero and the rock band instead of a...

What? We have some rebuttals for you, Ludwig. One of the thing that I'll say is that gamers need to kind of get over it. Like, I think that 15, 20 years ago, it was totally fair to be like, man, games are just being targeted all the time. Fox News is going after them for violence, yada, yada, yada. But, like, today, I mean, come on, like, games are not, like, anyone who doesn't take games seriously or, like, talk about games in the same breath as any other art form is just not someone worth listening to. So I think we have to get past this kind of, like, innate defensive. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I don't think we need that anymore. All right, let's keep going. This next question is from Julian. Julian says, love the show. Thursday, March 21st episode, which was a mailbag where ads and video games were discussed, got me perversely thinking about other ways to extract insane amount of money, insane amounts of money unfairly from games, and thinking about the explosion of sports gambling in the first few years

with platforms like Draft King and Fan Duel, etc. do you think we'll ever see gambling in video games? I'm not even talking bets on e-sports. I mean something like setting up a match of, I don't know, Smash or FIFA or Madden, and the client would let you set a wager on the outcome or other bets, and I could see this being fun among friends and then just take into the worst possible place by large companies. It's something like this inevitable.

Would legal restrictions prevent this? Gambling and video. Interesting. Unfortunately, legal restrictions don't prevent it because online poker is already a game that you can play if you can prove that you are legally capable of winning money and playing poker. No, actually, online poker has been banned for years. Damn. You can't make money from it anymore. It used to be a career.

There was a big incident. There was like a big crackdown a bunch of years ago. See, this is Jason Gambler Shrier coming forward with the gambling stats here. Go ahead. Lay it on us. Yeah, I mean, there was this thing called Black, I think it was called Black Friday or Black Tuesday or something like that where like all the online poker sites were taken down and we couldn't really do it legally anymore. So do you think that's part of why this type of thing couldn't happen now? Because there are some other soft gambling formats that just don't involve real money that games use all the time.

None of us are legal experts. The legal part of this isn't as interesting to me as the concept of gambling. Like, would it be fun to have gambling inside of a game? game somehow and I kind of I'm failing to see how that would be interesting. Yeah. Gambling on a game with your friend. Like, I don't know. I mean, I guess you could kind of have a friendly wager with the buddy, but then why would

you do it through the game instead of just being like, hey, I'll pay you 20 bucks if you win. You pay me 20 bucks if I win or something. Why would you need a game to support that is what I would wonder, because presumably then the game would take a. cut from the winning. So, of course, you would just want to do it on your own. And it would be... Yeah, I mean, it opens the door to a lot of really gross, manipulative stuff.

There are games that I've played where they introduce gambling mechanics within the game. Just like the mechanic of you're joining this fight, what is your bid on yourself? And you can put in up to a certain high number of money. And then if you win, you get that amount out. If you lose, you have to give it up. Like, that's a fairly common thing in mini games in RPGs, for example. And it's a way of add. stakes. I would say that in a Souls game, when you're fighting a really hard boss that you've

really been trying to beat, and then you're finally on a good run and you start using your consumables, when you use your consumables, that's for me when I like, I'm like, okay, I'm using the thing that sets my sword on fire. I'm using the stamina potion that I only have one of that I can't get more of. And this is going to be it. I'm going to do it. For me, like, that raises the stakes in a way that it's not gambling, but it's a little similar where I'm like using a non-repoena replenishable resource. And then that makes me so much more invested and then so much more upset if I die. Because then you get that whole like gambler rage, like the way that I had a roommate once who would play online poker and I would hear him screaming in his room. Like the worst like

cursing, it was so unpleasant. I think because the money was involved, it was like it got really toxic and negative. I can feel that even with a soul's game like where I'm kind of invested in that way. So I would hate for this to become like your money, your rent is on the, if you lose this boss fight or something, that feels totally, totally crazy to me. Yeah. Well, we talked about friction last week. I mean, I think part of what makes friction work is that you have to trust the designer and you have to trust the video game.

And when money is introduced... It's where the whole MTX thing with Dragon's Dogma, why that became an issue is because it's a game with a lot of friction. Exactly. And whenever money is introduced to the equation, it just makes the player just not trust it and then it ruins the entire game. And actually a good example of that. I wrote about in Play Nice,

my new book in Diablo 3, because Diablo 3 is a game when it first came out and had a real money auction house attached. And it also happened to be really difficult, and it was really tough to get loot in the highest difficulty setting. Sorry, the end game was really difficult when you got to like nightmare mode, hell, etc.

It was really hard to get loot. And it just gave players this kind of like ugly feeling of like, man, the best way to get loot right now is to go spend money on it in the real money auction house and the game is like pushing me to do that and that feels really gross. And I think that was totally, totally unintentional by the, by the developers, but still it introduced that that equation to it. And then taking that one step further, this is why Web3 and blockchain and video games will never work and has never worked and can never work. Because when

you introduce money to the equation, nobody wants to play it anymore because nobody can trust that the game is being fair and having mechanics that are fair. If you play blackjack, online for real money, like there's no way you can trust that the casino is like that the online casino is being fair to you. That's why you want to see real cards. And then there's still a certain degree of trust because you have to trust that like someone isn't manipulating the deck when you're getting it. But like you trust that there's regulations in place at the very least. When you get into video games, I mean, for there to have to be regulations attached, I mean, it's just talk about a can of worms. I mean, we already struggle to have regulations attached

even to loopboxes in America and other countries have done it and we have not. I mean, that in and of itself. It's like, God, don't introduce yet another layer here. We can't even handle the fake money. Can you imagine like Josh Holly up there talking about like false difficulty and Dragon's Dogma and how it needs to be adjusted?

No way. He probably is talking about that though. Like in his private conversations. He probably has an opinion on it. Yeah, so it's hard to see it working. But it's also, I mean, as someone who enjoys the occasional bout of gambling on sports, I don't see it ever really being a fun thing to do. Part of the appeal of betting on sports is that, okay, I'm watching this three-hour sports match. I want to be invested

in the outcome of this, so I'm going to put money on this team to win, so I have a rooting interest, and I can be really excited when they win or really sad when they lose. There's no equivalent for that in games, unless you're watching e-sports, which is something that is the equivalent of of sports betting. The equivalent, yeah, and and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and sports betting already in, in, in, period scenarios, like it, right, which Julian specified is not talking about that. Yeah, of course. Yeah. He's talking about in games themselves. Right. And so, the, the, the, the, the, the, one example that Julian brings up is, like, betting on the amount of a game with your friends or something like that. And like I said, I mean, doing that for fun, like as a, just kind of, like,

a, uh, to talk shit with your friends or whatever, like, great, fantastic, but you'll never do that through the game, because why would you? You would do it just out loud with your friends. Yeah. A great way to make a friendly bout of Smash Bros get really toxic instantly, though. I have experienced that at parties where suddenly somebody's like, let's put $20 on this, and the party just immediately takes a dark turn. So honestly, Julian, I wouldn't recommend it. Yeah, that's funny. Some people, it has to be the right people.

Has to be the right vibe. No one can be a sore loser. Yeah, yeah, that's the key. As you say, Jason, as soon as actual money is involved, everything changes. Everything changes, the tone changes, the vibe changes. It's just different. And when you're betting on a sports game, you're betting on something that is disconnected from you. Or even if you're betting on a League of Legends match, you're betting on something that's not happening

right there in the living room with you. And I don't know. There's just a super different time. Crucial difference. That's a very important difference to articulate. Yeah. Yeah. When you know the people involved.

Yeah, exactly. And there's a reason it's illegal. And when you're directly responsible for the outcome, you're playing the video. Right. So if you're losing, like, you're losing money because of your own inability to win. And also, like, sports players notoriously are not allowed to bet on their own performance. That's like a whole thing. So there's actually, as we speak, there's a big controversy involving an NBA player who was potentially tied.

It's not proven yet, but could allegedly be tied to betting on undersets of himself. So like underscoring X number of points. Sort of like throwing a match, basically. He took himself out of a game and like wasn't, like, didn't score and so on and so forth. So there are actually a couple of those controversies. There's also another giant one in baseball going on right now. So there are a few sports betting controversies that will only like just grow exponentially over time. So it's not like sports gambling is going super well.

It's like the crazy amount of money attached here. Anyway, let's keep moving. Maddie, what's the next question? So this one is from Caitlin, who writes, first off, huge fan of the podcast and very happy to be a max fund member. Thanks so much, Caitlin. Mailbag question for you. As someone who grew up performing in musical theater,

I find video games satisfy the same love of interactive storytelling that dancing across the stage does. Working together with my playable characters and the video game developers to tell a story feels very similar to working together with cast and crew to present a stage show. If you could make a musical out of any video game, what would you pick? Is there a musical you would want to see turned into a video game? All right. Here we go. Yeah, so many, right? Fiddler on the roof.

You play as a Teviya the Milkman and you have five daughters so it's kind of like a Star Doe Valley thing you have to like manage your five daughters I'm having deja vu right now I feel like you've pitched this before not a bad thing but I do feel like

we've had this conversation at some point but I love the idea, keep it I believe it It's a great idea for a video game Kirk is a noted musical fan I feel like I have to throw to you next Well I think that I mean Hades is already

kind of Hades Town as a video game. It's almost got the same name. Orpheus is in it. There's a lot of good music. It's sort of similar. I don't know. Would cats be a good video game?

Like there's a bunch of different kinds of cats. Like Mongo Jerry has different special abilities compared to Rumble teaser. Yeah, it would be kind of like a mega man scenario where like there's a different boss every level and you have to like fight, you know. You're playing as like, are you playing Grizzabella? Yeah, you're playing as Grisabella and you have to get to the thing at the end

where you die and you go on the trepies? That's what happens at the end of cats, more or less. A couple more suggestions. Well, actually, Maddie you go first, and then I have a couple more suggestions. Oh, boy. I mean, I would actually see a stage production of Allen Wake, too. I just want to put that out there.

I'd like to manifest that in the world. That video game already kind of is a musical and a play, and that is kind of a game where I'm like, maybe this should have been a play. Maybe it didn't need to be a game, and we could have just made this a musical, and that would have been a really cool musical. Well, okay, fair enough.

It's not to say I don't love the game, but I do feel like there's a version of it that is a stage play that's a horror show about a sort of Stephen King's-Rider and has the songs. And I think that's a fun concept for a show. Is there a musical I want to see turned into a video game? Oh, boy, I don't know. High school me would have said like rent or something, but I don't know how. I don't know what that would look like. It's a visual novel. It's kind of a Final Fantasy 7-esque, like your best friends and you have to fight against circumstances of capitalism.

instead of Shinrods, your friend Benny or whatever. Fed against Benny. Stupid responsible Benny. It could be like a simulator, like a money simulator type thing. Yeah, yeah. Okay, couple suggestions for me. Hamilton, it's half, half of it is like a revolutionary war shooter game, and then the other half is a political, like,

like Game of Thrones-esque, like you gotta figure everything out, yeah. Like, sort of like a paradox, one of those kind of like grand strategy political games. There's like rapping, like, rhythm games that you have to play. Yeah, there's a parapet, the rap part of it as well. That's for the rap battles on the floor of the house. A little shop of horrors, of course. One of the greats. You have to battle a giant plant.

Wouldn't that be like a kind of starty value? Like you're maintaining the plant. You have to feed it different things. That would be actually a good, I could see that being a good game. Yeah. Or you play as the plant and you have to be the plant mastermind trying to convince different people how to feed you. Oh, sure.

Wins at the end of the musical. It sure does. I know. I just saw that musical a couple years ago. Sweeney Todd, a stealth game. A stealth, Swinney Todd. Do you play as Mrs. Love it? You have to cover up the murders or what?

Yes. Oh, yes. That would be perfect, actually. Yeah, you have to cover it. You have to find victims and get them to Sweeney Todd and cover it up. That actually sounds like a great game. Yeah, it would be a fantastic game. That would be so cool.

Grease, just because you want to, you just play as a bunch of grease balls. Just like a persona game. You're in high school. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Think about Greece is nothing happens in Greece. Nothing happens. Greece has no actual story.

You would have to add story. Well, it takes place, it's a persona game. It takes place over a single summer. Oh, okay. You have to build your social link. Okay, okay. I can see it. Maybe you add a little combat to the equation.

Yeah, that's right. Are we counting movie musicals? I feel like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory would be a pretty cool game because you'd be able to explore the chocolate factory. Are you Willie Wonka? So you have to figure out who should be your successor and you like evaluate each of the children. Yeah, maybe it's like a tiny tower thing,

like you're building the chocolate factory. And then you lure children into it and teach them lessons. You have to build like the chocolate river and all the different traps. Like it's like dungeon keeper. Yeah, yeah, dungeon keeper. That would be great, Willy Wonka dungeon keeper. Or Willy Wonka, kind of like the Lys of P version of Willy Wonka where it's kind of like a hard.

The Timothy Shaoamamee where you're a little haughty. It comes to Timothy Shaoamese and the new Wonka. Yep, yep. That's so markable right now. It's just called, it's just called W. Oh man, good stuff. Yeah, I don't know. I think I'm out, but I'm sure, I mean, I'm sure you can turn any kind of famous musical into.

See how easy this was? This is a perfect party game that we've just invented. Play it with your friends. I mean, a lot of the Disney ones, there were like Disney games, like platformers attached to the Disney musical. There's like the terrible Aladdin game that I remember playing where you're like jumping around. Yeah, I don't think, I don't remember it being terrible. I remember it being really basic and not a lot happened, and it wasn't enough like Aladdin for my tastes. What was, what's the name of the, oh, Hercules.

There's a great Hercules platformer for the Sega that I played based on the Hercules movie, the Disney Hercules movie. There's Kingdom Hearts which recreates Disney movies, inexplicably, some fun, some terrible. Yeah, it has the frozen, well, the entire Red A Go song is in Kingdom 133. It just plays the music video. But that does happen. That's one way to make a game a musical is to just play a song in it. The first question of Caitlin's,

which is sort of the inverse of what we've talked about, is if you could make a musical out of any video game. Right. It's a fun one. We've already listed a bunch of them. We don't have to do a bunch more. But I do think it's cool how increasingly video games are introducing musical sequences.

Yes. Yes. We made this joke a lot last year. We were like, wow, last year was kind of a year where every video game was also became a musical at some point. But Final Fantasy 7. rebirth. Arith sings a song in it.

Like, they do it again. It's on going. And you perform a like, you know, whatever, a dramatic version thing from an opera after like an aria is sung while they dance. Yeah. So I think that like there is, I think a lot of game designers agree with Caitlin. Oh, for sure. There is a lot of interesting overlap with like the craft of creating these set pieces and building a stage and rehearsing with everybody and performing. And I mean, this has been true a long time. We all played Final Fantasy Six, right? Like we played through the opera house. of that game. And it's been always kind of been there, but it's cool to see it more and more. Yeah. Just turning up in like bigger and bigger games with higher production values and more

outrageous sequences. Yeah, or like Princess Peach Showtime, which I mentioned as a one more thing a couple weeks ago, you're in a playhouse the entire time and Peach is like acting out the plays trying on the costumes each time. It's a lot of Mario games have like the curtains parting and the characters are sort of acting out of play. I mean, that's, I don't know. There's many, many other games where this happens. Mario Odyssey had that live musical performance also with the, what was it called that? Super catchy song. Yeah, it was good.

Got you. Jump up superstar. Yeah, that was a good song. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Da-da-da-da-da-da. Right, you have to get the band together. Yeah. Yeah, it was cute.

Anyway, all right, let's keep going. Kirk, you're next. This question comes from Adam, who writes, I have a burning question that relates to higher education in the games industry. I'm a former game developer who now teaches you. university courses on how to develop video games, and I often struggle with the morality of guiding impressionable young adults into an industry that is brutal and unforgiving. Even though I believe the craft of making games is worthy of study, I can't shake the feeling that I am leading students

down a road that is hard mentally, physically, and financially. As honest as I am with them about the low salary, unstable, highly competitive jobs, I still feel that I am contributing to a deeply broken system. Is there an ethical way to approach game education as a teacher? Can the craft of game making be separated from the unforgiving industry to which it is paired. I'd hate to live in a world where only lucrative art forms are acceptable to teach, but I also can't deny the volatility of the game industry in its current state. I'd love to hear your thoughts. P.S. I love Jason's book. Press Reset. I was one of the contractors who got let go a few months before Warren Spector's audio, Austin Studio Junction Point got shut down. It was so interesting seeing Warren's perspective

during that time through the book. It's hard to imagine him yelling. I'm not sure my brain can even process it. He is such a joyful person and he would when he would chat with us in the hallways, I had no idea the amount of stress he was under during that time. Yeah, that's wild. Because I thought that was just a cool. It is a good idea. So yeah, I mean, I think that game making can absolutely be separated from the industry. If you're teaching the craft of making games, that as an art form is a very totally, is like can be totally excised from the idea of like surviving in this industry in a lucrative way. In large part because you can make games without ever becoming a professional video game worker.

Like you can just make games in the same way that you can make music on the side or do whatever. Like some people on this podcast, do not lucratively. Yeah, I don't know about that. I was thinking about this related to my own musical education because I studied jazz performance and got a major. And actually an integral part of my education was the professional side of it. And I think that that was actually a very valuable part of the education. So you could, in theory,

learn music just as a totally like just on its own as an art form. But the way that I was taught, and I think the way that so much music is made, like is as a product or as a service that you're selling. So the school I went to, it was very much like, you're going to learn how to become a professional saxophonist. So you have to learn like doubling. You have to learn flute and clarinet. You have to learn how to read.

You have to like participate in studio sessions a whole bunch and learn how to be a studio a musician. You have to be in a band. You have to learn how to work with people to get gigs and sub for people. And there's like a whole apparatus at the school that was simulating a little microcosm of a jazz scene that we all then had to participate in. And I graduated feeling like ready to enter the world. And then because of that, I was able to enter the world of music and then be a musician in the world playing and gigging and working with people, which is where I learned a whole ton of what I know now. And I don't know that it's the same in games because obviously I don't make games and didn't learn that. But I would think that in teaching people to make games,

you probably are preparing them for the real world where they will then go learn a whole lot more. Like I'm sure a lot of game designers will tell you, well, I learn a lot more on the job than I did getting my degree. So you do, it is all part of the same educational pipeline. Like you are kind of getting ready people to, getting people ready to go into the profession, even though, I mean, I think Adam raises some good questions about that. Yeah, okay, I think that's a good point And so forget what I said before About being able to excise them

Well, so getting at the question here, the actual question here, which is like, is it unethical to prepare people for an industry that is broken? No, I don't think so. I don't think that's an unethical thing Because I don't think that I think training someone, I think what would be unethical is if you pretend that those problems don't exist. I think part of preparing people for the games industry is getting, like, bracing them and being like, look, this is the reality of

that this is what you're going to have to overcome. And I think journalism is the same way. Like I think journalism school needs to exist and the idea of teaching people, the craft of journalism needs to exist. But at the same time, journalism professors and programs need to prepare kids and students for the reality that like,

hey, this industry is broken and it's very difficult to actually get into it. In the same kind of route, I mean, I mentioned this before. I went to NYU. There's an entire program. Like so many people are going there to try to get into,

Hollywood to break it into acting or screenwriting. And I mean, it feels unethical to do that without warning them like, hey, you have a one in a bazillion chance of actually making it in this field, which the good, the best professors do. So I think all of that is kind of like part, it's like part of the territory. It's just kind of the teaching people the downsides or the warnings that they need to know in order to approach the industry. And actually, I think, taking it one step further, it would be unethical to, like, it would be almost, it's kind of like unethical to not teach for that reason when you are prepared with knowledge and experience in this case of the games industry that you can go and share with people because that helps educate them

and prepare them for the reality of it. So it's almost like you are doing a valuable service by being a professor and teaching this stuff so long as you do it in an honest way. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I thought of journalism, too. when reading this question, because nowadays it's not uncommon for me to talk to college students about journalism and their anxieties as they ask questions about, oh, what is it like to get a job? How would I go about that? But they also far more frequently will just ask questions about the craft because just as when I was in college, I had no real world perceptions of what it was actually going to be like

to enter the workforce. So if anything, I appreciated it when I had performance. and speakers and whomever coming to the class and actually giving that real world experience and very practical advice because it's fun to just stay in the cerebral mode and just be like, well, here's what we would do in an ideal world where there's just oodles of journalism jobs and you could pursue just feature-length investigative projects. And it's like, okay, great, let's learn about all those skills. Let's talk about that.

But also, let's talk about what it's going to really be like when you're in the world and your pitching stories and whether or not they're fundable or of interest to the audience. And it sucks to have to think about it in that way, but that is capitalism, I guess. I mean, you do have to let the kids know capitalism exist, I suppose, is what I'm saying. It's too bad. They probably know if they're taking out loans to be there. Yeah, but they haven't started paying them off yet. That's true.

They haven't. They're still in a bubble. All right. One last question before we go. I'm going to paraphrase this. This is from Willie. Willie says, as a long-time listener of Triple Quick, I have been repeatedly impressed by Jason's ability to recall even the most minor

plot points and character details from JRPGs that he last played from what I can tell over 20 years ago. Put a pin in that. I want to get it. I want to respond to that in a sec. I, in contrast, often have trouble remembering the basic story beats of games I played in the last six months. As games get bigger and bigger, I find myself increasingly daunted by the sheer amount of story I'm expected to keep in my head. you all have tips for gamers with poor narrative memory.

How can I continue to be immersed in a game story when I only imperfectly remember everything that's going on? So, okay, the reason I can recall, like, minor plots and characters from J-RBGs I played 20 years ago is because I played them all 20 times. Because you only had four games and you just played them. Well, it wasn't just that. What people don't realize today is that back then,

the only way to hear a video game soundtrack was to play through it. And so if I wanted to hear that amazing Final Fantasy, whatever music, I had to keep playing through it over and over again. And then you just leave your character standing there and then you just listen to it. Yep, exactly. Exactly. So that's why I remember that stuff. I have a terrible, like I barely remember the plots of a game I played a week ago.

It's only, at least for me, when I read a book or play a game or watch a movie or watch a show, like at least two times, then it really kind of hammers home for me. And one of the reasons for that I think is because the first time I want to happen I want to know what happens next so badly that I kind of lose things along the way, I suppose, whereas the second time I can really kind of enjoy it and like let it kind of, I don't know, soak into me. But what about you guys? What do you, what do you think of kind of story memory? This is a tough one. I mean, Willie shouts out Baldr's Gate 3 in one of the sentences that you breeze by, understandably so. But that is just such a great example of a game where

there were many parts where I was like, I don't know what anyone's talking about. I don't know what's going on right now. I'm just going to let this wash over me. And I kind of was like, well, I'm playing as this half-or character who's like also a little dumb and well-meaning. And so even as my character, sometimes I'd like select dialogue being like, I'm not really sure what's going on. But here's what I'm going to try to guess what's going on and then kind of have that be part of my character. So for something like Baldur's Gate 3 that is that narratively nuanced, you can kind of get away with that by being like, look, I'm having trouble keeping this all straight myself. and so does my character, ha-ha.

But when it comes to other games, I don't know, I just Google it and look at the wiki. Sometimes it's the game's fault. Sometimes the game expects you to remember something that happened 20 hours earlier without any context. And that's on the game. It's absurd. Yeah.

I have some thoughts and tips on this. Yeah, I definitely have found, especially over the last five years, I'm sure just as I've gotten older. And also, it honestly feels like, so it's partly just my brain connections are slowing down a little bit. And also my brain is fuller than it's ever been, because I've been alive longer, so there's just more in there.

And it just sometimes feels like it is harder for me to keep track of something that I played this week, compared with something from 20 years ago where I'm like, oh, yeah, sure, grim fandango. I'll tell you every character's name. Yeah, yeah. So I think some of it is just like that brain stuff. And I definitely have some tips, I guess, or some things that I've noticed about my memory. One thing is I find that reading things helps me retain, especially names and sort of places and titles. when I am watching shows, I find that it's very helpful to read recaps.

Even if I'm watching a show where the whole season is out and I've watched like four episodes, I'll go and read a recap of the first one. And it really like locks everything into my brain, just reading every name as like a recapper re-describes in their own words what happened. I'm like, right, that's that person and that person and that person. And because I'm reading it, it's like, you know, your brain takes in information differently. So then in games, I think, for some people, I bet that turning on subtitles, helps with like remembering the names of different fantasy characters or whatever. And a lot of games now also have those codices, like a codex that you can go and look at

that'll just be like, here's this character. Dragon Zogba actually has this. Like a lot of them have it. You don't ever go look at it because a lot of people don't. But you can. FF7 Rebirth also. There's like this codex with like really helpful little Wikipedia entries for everything in the game.

And I would think that by reading it, you would see it and like burn it into your memory in a visual way because you're like seeing the words. that that could be helpful. And also, like, reading, like, pre-game summary, like a lore recap or an explanation of the world, sometimes there will be articles, like service articles. It'll be like, here's what you need to know to understand the world of the Witcher before you play The Witcher 3. And even that, it can just be like, okay, right, like, this is where we are, this is what's happening.

It gives you a kind of container in your brain into which to put all of the things that you're getting, which makes it easier to remember things. And then something I don't do for games, but that I do do typically for nonfiction books that I learned from Emily, actually, my wife, who does this with every book she reads. She takes notes. Like, she just reads books with a notebook. And just at the end of each chapter, she just writes down a few things and, like, what chapter it was.

I think you could do this with post-its. I see people who do that, too. I don't do that with games, but you could do that for a narrative game and just write, like, here's what happened in chapter five. And in your own words, just re-articulate, you know, so-and-so did this. And then it turned out so-and-so was actually, like, the dark lord such and such. I'm like, you write it all down, and I think that by writing it down, it'll really put it into your brain in a different way. I don't do that. It's definitely like, that might sound weird to some people. I don't know, Willie, if this would work for you or not. But that's something to think about if you want to, like, have a stronger hold on these stories. So there's some things that come to mind. As the most aged member of our podcast, whose memory is thus the most show. I don't know. I might start doing that. It sounds fun. I do do that when I'm reviewing a game. I take a lot of notes.

Oh, absolutely. Or even a game for the show. like I have notes on every game we've ever played. Yeah. It's very helpful. And then it's much easier to remember things when I take notes on it. Good tips. Good tips.

All right, guys, let's take a break and we'll be back with one more thing. Are you tired of being picked on for only wanting to talk about your cat at parties? Do you feel as though your friends don't understand the depth of love you have for your guinea bit? When you look around a room of people, do you wonder if they know slots only have to eat one leaf a month?

Have you ever dumped someone for saying they're just not an animal person. Us too. She's Alexis B. Preston. She's Ella MacLeod. And we host comfort creatures. The show where you can't talk about your pets too much, animal trivia is our love language,

and dragons are just as real as dinosaurs. Tune into comfort creatures every Thursday on Maximum Fun. What is up, people of the world? Do you have an argument that you keep having with your friends and you just can't seem to settle it and you're sitting there arguing about whether it's Star Trek or Star Wars, or you can't decide what is that? the best nut or can't agree on what is the best cheese.

Stop doing that. Listen to We Got This with Mark and Howl only on Max Fun. Your topics ask and answered objectively, definitively, for all time. So don't worry, everybody. We got this. We got this. And we are back. Kirk Maddie, and it's time for one more thing. Once again, we made it. Kirk, why didn't you go first? All right, I'll go first. My one more thing is an article about F1. racing that I read a little while back. It was published at the beginning of March, and I wanted

to make it one more thing for a little while, and now I'm going to. And it's sort of a sideways way of just saying that F1 racing itself is very interesting. And Emily and I have been watching this show F1 Drive to Survive that I think is very popular on Netflix. The infamous show, yes. Yes. And as a result, like we watched, we're in season two of that now. And I have sort of become at least sort of interested in F1. Like, it is a fascinating world that I knew nothing about that's very popular all around the world. And then in America has only just started to become popular. I think thanks, at least in large part, to this Netflix show, because the show makes it very easy to learn what's going on. They edit down the races and kind of show you the narratives and introduce

you to all the characters, the drivers, the team owners and managers. And kind of, they build a little narrative into each episode. It's a very watchable show. It's super entertaining. And then F1 itself is like a bizarre, kind of perverse, fascinating world. So the article I want to talk about is a fantastic article about F1 that I would recommend to anyone who has watched Drive to survive and his sort of, at least sort of knew to F1. My sister told me to watch F1. And when I started thinking about watching it or thinking about F1, I didn't even really know what it was. Like, I didn't know that F1 racing is distinct from indie car racing, for example, or stock car racing. In that F1, I think there are now some regulations, but it's not really regulated. So like Ferrari has an F1

team and the whole thing, they spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year trying to make the fastest car that has ever existed with no restrictions on them other than like how fast can you make it. And then they race that car with their drivers. And Mercedes has the same thing. And then all these other teams use various engines made by various manufacturers. Indy car and NASCAR or NASCAR in America, those are like you have to use one car. You have one engine. You can tool it and like tune it however you want, but it's down to the skill of the driver. And like NASCAR, they just drive in circles over and over and over again.

F1, it'll be like, they'll be in like Abu Dhabi or whatever or like Milan on this wild like course that's like been built for hundreds of millions of dollars somewhere. And every car is this like the fastest car ever made by man. And there's so much money pouring into the whole thing. It's totally crazy. And then they like these young. guys, who they're all guys, they're all young, get behind the wheel and just, like, go as fast as they possibly can.

It's a really interesting world. It's a very interesting show. It makes me feel kind of, like, there are things about it that I find, like, extremely uncomfortable, or at least there is so much money flowing in. The sponsors, it's like everything is sponsored by, like, Rolex and, like, fly emmerits. Like, just like a lot of, like, there are oligarchs everywhere. It is, like, where billionaires go to have fun. Like, if you're truly rich, you're into F1 and, like, probably own a team or something.

Like, it's very much, like, lifestyles of the ultra-rich. So that brings us to this article. That's my one more thing, which is called Behind F-1's Velvet Curtain. It was written by Kate Wagner. It was originally published at Rodin Track, which is kind of just a very meat-in-potatas car, like, race-driving magazine. It was published and then pulled without explanation, like, a day later. And that's the only reason I know about it. It's a fantastic example of the stric sand effect.

I heard about this article, too, for the exact same reason. Defector covered it, actually read it. I heard about it, and I was like, I bet there's an article about this on defector. And like Patrick had an article already off on defector, which is great. So this article is really good. You can read it. There's an archive of it, and they've also put it up at Escape Collective, which is another kind of defectory outlet where you have to have a membership to read it, but you can get a free trial.

So we'll link to both of those in the show notes. It's a very, very good piece of writing by Kate Wagner, a judge. journalist who went to an F1 race. And it feels like reading a Gawker article, actually. It reminds me of some of those great pieces where a Gawker writer would go somewhere or a deadspin writer. Like a gonzo style of narrative, personal narrative. Yeah, it's not fully like, it's really just like I'm there and this is my experience, but it's like a holistic experience, not just of like the race and the personalities, but of like the bizarre level of wealth, like the feeling of like this other world that you've entered, the velvet curtain that you've gone beyond, which is what the article

is getting at. Some of the beauty and like the incredible, like the people, Lewis Hamilton, who's a very famous F1 driver, features in this article, and she finds him just fascinating, which I do too watching the show. He's a really compelling person just because he's this like very winning racer, but like, what does it even take to be an F1 racer who wins as much as him? And then the car itself, this incredible thing that has been created, all this money and energy that's built this device, but for what purpose?

It's a really, really good and really smart article. And that is actually the thing that I want people to go read. I'm sure if some people watch Drive to Survive, that's a fine show. It's cool. F1 is a weird, interesting sport. Go read this article. It's a super interesting take on it. And I think it's worth checking out.

So wait, so why was it pulled? They never really gave a good reason. I thought you're going to say some big investigation into the oligarchs, and that's why it was pulled. No, it's very critical of the money and of, the access and the way that journalists like, you know, kind of like play the game to get access. Okay. It's a kind of edgy piece.

Reading it, I was like, I don't see anything wrong with this. And also, it made me read Rodin Track Magazine. And I'm betting a lot of other people did, too, when they wouldn't have otherwise. So I don't know why an editor would pull it because it's interesting journalism. There's nothing wrong with it. The editor said something along the lines of, I didn't know this was getting published and it's not right for us. It was a very vague statement. They gave a statement to Defector.

Interesting. But they never really clearly explained what's going on. And Kate Wagner, for her part, has been like, I stand by Mirai reporting. That was the piece I wrote. That's what she said. Interesting. Cool. Sounds fun.

Maddie, what's your one more thing? All right. So mine is Sailor Moon, but I actually want to talk about Sailor Moon episode titles. So I've been watching all of Sailor Moon. That's a rewatch for me. First watched the original American version of Sailor Moon that censored a lot of the show when I was a child. And then when I was 19 years old, I watched the actual show. Totally different show.

when you watch it with like the actual real Japanese language translation as opposed to the deke dub, which people who are familiar with Sailor Moon's original American dub will know what I'm talking about. There's a bunch of queer relationships that were cut out and that that are on the show. So anyway, that's not even what I want to talk about. Something really fascinating about Sailor Moon is that every episode, Usagi, who's the main character, she's Sailor Moon, spoils the entire episode for you at the very beginning of the episode, at least according to modern definitions of what spoilers are. She's going to tell you the title of the episode, and then she tells you a little synopsis of what happens. And then what's fun about watching

the episode is you get to see how it happens. And that is why you would ever watch an episode of Sailor Moon. So I'm going to read you guys some episode titles. So here's episode 24. Narum's Tears. Nephright dies for love. Here's episode 86. Safir dies. Wise man's trap. All right, here's episode 110. The death of Uranus and Neptune. The talismans appear. These are episodes where these characters die. And they tell you, they tell you right at the top.

The Usagi comes out. She literally will face the screen. These are like fourth wall breaking little three minute intros where like Sailor Moon will talk to you, the viewer. And like a lot of anime in the 90s did this. This was just like a really common storytelling convention. This is like Romeo and Juliet. Right?

Exactly. Where the character talks to you and says, get ready for some sad stuff to happen. It's so fascinating. And like watching this as a child and a teenager, I didn't think about this aspect of the storytelling at all because I, you know, I had done enough media studies work yet. But watching it as an adult, I'm so struck by it every time is like completely bizarre and unlike anything else I watch today where like the main character will face the screen and be like, oh no, Naro's really in trouble this week.

She's fallen in love with so and so and he's going to die. what are we going to do? All right, let's get to it. It's like, it's crazy. It's like, I mean, to Kirk's point, it's like the Shakespearean chorus. It really is. And I do think it's fascinating to have a show that just has absolutely no relationship whatsoever with spoilers in the way that we think of it now.

And it's made me really think about 90s anime storytelling conventions. A lot of this is like kind of baked into the way that the show works. Like, the characters have secret identities. I'm not going to go on and on about Sailor Moon, I promise. But the characters have secret identities that are not known to one another, except that you, the viewer, always know every single person's secret identity. Like, from episode one, you know who Tuxedo Mask is. But Sailor Moon doesn't know it's Mamaroo for, like, dozens and dozens of episodes.

And she keeps running into him on the street and being like, oh, this cute guy. Like, I don't know, whatever. Anyway, Tuxedo Mask. But, like, you, the viewer, it's never a secret to you. I just think it's a really fascinating storytelling technique. And I think we should bring it back. Because I'm enjoying the heck out of it. And I'm like, really what I enjoy about stories is not like so-and-so dies.

Like, yeah, you know, we're all sad when we get spoiled on something like that. I get it. There's a reason why trolls like to do that, like as an antisocial behavior. I understand that intellectually. But watching Sailor Moon is reminding me that really what's fun about a story is getting to see how it all plays out. Because in every episode title that I just read to you, you will never get. why the characters die. There's absolutely no way you could guess it.

And in each case, I was like, what? How? How did we get here? And like, that's the point of the show is that you go in and you're like, why these characters are going to die? Oh, no, I better watch that episode. So you find out why they die. Anyway, 90s anime, pretty good.

Pretty good stuff. I mean, spoiler culture, it's very different when it's a deliberate decision by the author of a work. Very true, very true. Because you happen to see a headline that was like, unabashed about it. Speaking of those old tropes, I've been watching, re-watching the Mission Impossible movies

with some friends. We just do Mission Impossible Movie Night. And those movies do the same thing that the show used to do, which I always forget before I watch the movie. And that's that during the opening credits, they show the whole movie. Like, there's, like, clips of every action scene

and of, like, the close-up of the bomb being diffused and the helicopter flying and them jumping out of the plane. And it's, like, it's all out of context, and you can't really tell what's going on. But it is kind of, like, the way old TV shows. would just show you like here's what's coming man you're going to see this because they want you to watch like it's almost like how reality shows will show you like somebody's going to get kicked off this week and you're like okay great i'm going to tune in it's like that except with fiction instead it's very funny yeah it's fun it is a kind of an old-fashioned thing like a radio drama or an old episode of Mission Impossible yeah it is enjoyable when it's deliberate and done in a cool way yeah it's great fun uh all right my one more thing is a book uh and this is a book called the mysterious case of the Alpertine Angels by Janice Hallett.

Dennis Hallett is a British writer, journalist-turned-author, and that's an important piece of context for this book, because this book is about a true crime writer slash journalist who is assigned to write this book about a cult called the Alpertin Angels, a fictional cult, and this is a novel book. It's not like an actual true book. Within the fiction of the book, it's about this true crime author, and the Alpertine angels are this cult that thought this baby was the Antichrist and tried to kill it until two of its members defected,

the parents of the baby defected and ran off of the baby. And then three members of the cult killed themselves instead. And it's a whole big thing. And it's what's interesting, the kind of hook of this book is that it is entirely told through a combination of emails from the journalists, transcripts of interviews she's having with people, and kind of like excerpts of books and screenplays that are relevant to the story. Epistillary novels? Is that what that's called?

Like Carrie. Yeah, like Carrie. Yeah, like Carrie. Like, Stephen King likes to do that. Yes, and it's a really interesting kind of framing. And what I find really kind of chilling almost about it is the way in which it captures the journalistic process and also the way in which the main character of the book

violates all sorts of journalistic ethics in all sorts of ways as she is going. fiction always like this. They are terrible. Yeah, I can't tell. I haven't finished the book yet, and I can't tell if it's like, if it's just kind of British tabloid standards, or if you're meant to be reading it as like, oh, this woman is really just like an unethical journalist. I can't, I really, I don't ever read on that just yet. But yeah, but it's interesting. It's a really gripping book. It really kind of grabs you and doesn't let go. You have to, with these kind of, with this kind of storytelling, just like with, Carrie, just like with World War Z, just with all these books that do it that way. You have to kind of be, you have to get used to it.

It takes a little while for you to kind of get used to the format and be like, okay, I'm not reading this in the way that I would normally read a novel. But once you do, this book is extremely enjoyable and very fun to read. A lot of the charm comes from the way in which it is told. And there's one part of, there's one thing I really enjoy about it, which is that there's a character in the book named Ellie Cooper, who is the assistant of the journalist, the main character, whose job is to transcribe the interviews. And every time you read an interview between two people or a conversation recording between two people, Ellie is adding her commentary sometimes. He does that in Ministry for the Future. It's like an AI that's doing it, but it's adding its own little notes and thoughts to various scenes.

It's very cool. Which if I were the journalist getting back a transcription with comments, I would be like, what the hell, like, stop it. But as a reader, it's very entertaining because you have these wry observations as you go, and you're kind of like, oh, okay, and add some interesting context. Yeah, it's a very fun read, and I feel like it's the type of mystery

that's going to really reward a close reading. I get the feeling when all the twists are kind of shaken out. Once again, it's called The Mysterious Case of the Alpertine Angels by Janice Hallett. Man. Cool. World War Z is so good. We should like to do a World War Z Beanskinskins. I really liked that book. We should all read that book and do an episode on it.

I have a copy of that book lying around. I could just dig it back out. Yeah. It's good stuff. All right. That is it for this week's episode. Kirk, Maddie. See you both next week.

Yeah. See you next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration, you can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes.

Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun podcast network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at Triple ClickPod. Send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows. Supported directly by you. Thank you.